*article was written for itsfoss.com
Last year, the team behind Stremio — a one-stop hub for video content aggregation — featured a competition that encouraged the community to develop add-ons for their open-source video streaming application. Many people participated, but only four were awarded prizes. This year, the team is trying to replicate that same success by hosting another add-on competition.
The prize pool is the same, but the competition has evolved, and participants have less than two weeks to enter their submissions to compete for a total of $5,000 in rewards.
Competition structure and deadlines
There are four prizes up for grabs this year — one voted on by the Stremio team and three more that will be distributed based on the Stremio community vote.
Stremio Judge panel vote: $2,000 or the equivalent of $2,000 in Bitcoin
First place, community vote: $1,500 or the equivalent of $1,500 in Bitcoin
Second place, community vote: $1,000 or the equivalent of $1,000 in Bitcoin
Third place, community vote: $500 or the equivalent of $500 in Bitcoin
The competition opened on March 1 and submissions are accepted until May 20. Then, the judges and community will have ten days from May 21 to 31 to review and vote on their favorite submissions. On June 3, the winners will be announced, and the prizes will be distributed via Bitcoin or PayPal where the winner has the option to choose which they prefer.
There are a few stipulations that entries must meet in order to enter: each add-on submission must be publicly uploaded to GitHub, they must be able to run remotely on a server, they should include metadata and/or streaming content for Stremio, and they must be submitted before midnight on the 20th.
If your submission or submissions meet these criteria (yes you can submit more than one add-on), then you will be considered for one of the monetary prizes listed above.
Thoughts on Stremio and the add-on competition
I don’t know about you, but I love Stremio. I have used the product for several years now, and it has almost everything I need to keep up with my favorite movies, tv shows, and even YouTube videos (Shameless plug: you should follow our YouTube channel if you don’t already for our latest Linux and FOSS-related video content).
But no matter how much I love the product, it has its downfalls. Most notably that some of the community add-ons can promote and illegally stream copywritten content, similar to add-ons offered by products like Kodi.
Despite that making a bad impression on some people, Stremio has some very useful features even without using any of the community add-ons.
This isn’t a review of the product by any means, but some of the features Stremio has that make it a compelling alternative to something like Kodi is an intuitive and simple UI, a calendar that lays out the release dates of the tv shows in your library, direct integration with Trakt.tv to track your watch history, live television integration, support for web channels like YouTube and Twitch.tv, and the ability to share what you are watching on social media.
The use cases and features go way beyond that, especially when you consider the ever-growing database of community add-ons. Now, we wait and see exactly how much Stremio’s functionality increases once the current add-on competition comes to an end.
Conclusion
If you have some technical knowledge, you are a movie/tv show lover, and you like winning money, then you should consider entering an add-on into the Stremio Add-on Competition. Even if you don’t win, since Stremio and all of the add-ons are free and open-source, everyone in the ever-growing community behind the application will benefit from your contribution.
For more information about the add-on competition, head over to Stremio’s blog, and you will find all the information you need to compete. If you are interested in me writing a full review of Stremio, let us know in the comments below or wherever you follow us on social media.